Hey, are you in the process of litigating against a narcissist?
Do you want to know how to beat them?
Do you want to know what kind of tricks they pull?
This is an unprecedented opportunity to watch a video with me and the foremost authority
on narcissism from the psychological perspective, Dr. Ramani.
This is part two of a two-part episode and we are tackling the question of how to successfully
litigate against a narcissist.
So you want to watch till the end because we have so many pearls of wisdom for you.
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But it does...
I think that the idea of watching your tone becomes critical.
Listen, I know no one can ever stop an emotional state.
Emotions are natural.
You never want to keep them, you never want to bottle them up, but you've got to learn
how to channel them.
And watching tone becomes critical.
Because ironically, it's almost like a way a dog can hear frequencies the rest of us
can't hear.
Narcissist can hear tone inflections the rest of us can't.
Excuse me, excuse me?
You're like, "Excuse me?
What are they saying?"
But it can be a blink of an eye.
It can be the tiny bit of tone.
It can be your body language at a moment.
They're going to pick up on it.
And two, you almost need to train yourself in what I call sort of a hostage negotiator
voice, which is very calm, very tempered, very consistent.
But some of them will also take umbrage at that.
And I've had many of my clients- Oh, they do.
Of course.
When they go back and they start dealing with the narcissist with the tools I've given them
saying, "Oh, so you're better than me now?"
And it's interesting that they go there because they realize now they're being outplayed.
And so that's what's happening too.
Right.
And so that's when you just say, "I don't think that I'm better than you."
You just respond.
And the way I usually phrase it is you just look at it as if you're looking at a two year
old having a temper tantrum on the floor.
You don't feel like going down there and having a temper tantrum with them, you're just observing
it.
And so that's, you're just kind of just observing the situation.
Be prepared that they're going to obstruct at every possible angle.
So they're not going to give you the discovery that you ask for.
They're going to make you work for every single bank statement, every single piece of information.
Anything that they think that you want, that's what you're not going to get.
So, going back to the manipulate the manipulator, you just have to act like the thing that means
the most to you, you don't care about.
When you're putting together your entire global package of what you want, decide what you
want and asks for a hell of a lot more than that and be prepared for what you're going
to give away.
And then when you give that away, act like it was the worst possible thing, like you're
cutting off your arm.
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Yeah.
If you think you're going to get the satisfaction that the person knows that you got what you
wanted and...
You're never going to settle, it's never going to happen.
Well, and one of the best tales I have about this, I remember working on a malignant narcissistic
father, a really, really beaten down mother.
They had many children.
And it was a horrific, horrific divorce.
And I remember there's a time I said, just...
She had texted me and she said, "Listen, here's the deal."
It was basically, the long story short was, she wanted the children on a particular weekend
very much because of a family event.
It was supposed to be her weekend, but he had sort of brow beaten her into dividing
that weekend up in an odd way that would throw off this family event.
And I said to her...
And so he insisted, "No, I am entitled to this time until this time."
And [inaudible 00:04:10].
Bully, bully, bully.
Entitled, entitled, entitled.
And I said to her, "What you've got to do is text him and say, wonderful, this works
out so great for me because my girlfriends are having like this big party and we're all
going out to this new wine bar.
So the timing is great.
I'm so glad you have a good weekend."
Five minutes, five minutes.
"I can't take them.
What are you trying to take advantage of me?"
And I was like...
And then she got the kids and they had wonderful family event.
So you have got to...
Again, like I said, narcissistic people are like knock knock jokes.
They're silly and you laugh at them kind of silly, but they're ridiculous.
And it was so easy to see what he was trying to do.
But she knew his Achilles heel.
He couldn't stand the idea that she was ever having fun.
I said, so let him think that him having the kids mean she's going to have fun-
That's brilliant.
Done.
And then she's used that gambit more than once.
And believe it or not, homey never figured it out.
So it worked out great.
Well, and another thing you could do is like massage their ego and say, "Oh, my family
will realize what a great dad you are.
Everybody thinks so highly of you."
So if you massage that ego a little bit and they're doing it because now they're going
to get credit for it somehow by looking like amazing, well that's another way that you
can potentially get it done too.
Absolutely.
Another thing you've spoken about is this idea of entitlement and using the court system
as sort of almost like their personal hammer to punish other people.
Yeah.
So they'll file any motion they possibly can dream up.
So it actually takes a lot more courage to sit down and have a real conversation with
a person.
Of course.
Because then you actually have to be vulnerable.
You actually have to be prepared to give up stuff and things like that.
But what narcissists will do is they'll use the system as a sword.
So every possible motion they can dream up.
The minute your discovery is one day late, they're filing a motion to compel.
They're filing custody evaluations, they're filing vocational evaluations.
They're going to file a motion for exclusive occupancy.
They're going to threaten to depose everyone at your office.
They're going to threaten to bring your parents into court.
Your elderly mother who's on oxygen, deposing her.
Nothing is left untouched- No, it's not.
And there's no thing that I'm not going to go.
There's no bar that's so low that I won't cross or whatever.
So they're sort of equal opportunity harassers at that point.
Right.
And I think a lot of people get almost bowled over in the shock of it all.
Right.
Of like you're deposing who?
You're sending this?
I remember even getting once caught in the crosshairs of a very, very toxic divorce and
watching the ex, or the now ex, literally he was sending subpoenas, he was having people
served all over town and he sadly was an attorney too.
And he had limitless money.
So he was subpoenaing people all over Los Angeles, all over the country.
And to me it was a grotesque...
First of all, I was like, what attorney was willing to sign up to represent this mess?
They'll take the money.
You know?
Believe me.
I mean, you can always find somebody to take the money.
I mean, my dad used to say the percentage of idiots per population is the same wherever
you go.
You'll always find a lawyer that will take the money.
And people will say, "Well how can their lawyer believe them?
How can they be saying this stuff?
Why isn't their lawyer telling them?"
Well their lawyer is a paid mouthpiece.
I mean that's what they're there to do.
I mean there's lawyers who have ethics and who aren't willing to go certain places but
there's a lot of lawyers that don't have that.
One of the things you had talked about, and I think this is one that often gets lost,
is having an attorney who gets narcissism.
I know when people come to me and say, "Dah, dah, dah, divorce, legal question."
I'm like, "Not my area, but you need to make sure your attorney gets this."
They've gone so far, my wise clients, have put me on the phone with their attorney and
I'm like, "Do you get this?"
And then I'll have the client in the room with me so we can lock eyes.
And I'll usually say, "Let this attorney go.
They don't get it."
And so I will grill the attorney to make sure they actually understand what this personality
pattern is.
And if they don't seem to be getting it, it's just not going to work.
So what kinds of questions would you advise someone, you're an attorney, to ask an attorney
to see do they get this?
Well I think questions you can ask, yeah, all right, how many people have you dealt
with that have narcissism or how many people have you represented or what has been the
outcomes and things like that?
Yes, you can ask those kinds of questions.
But I think more so it's going to be a gut feeling and it's going to be feel.
If you are telling the person what your experience has been, how this person has victimized you,
how they act.
Even if they don't use the word narcissism, although a lot of people do nowadays.
But even so, even if the person just says these are the types of things that they're
doing, it should tip the attorney off as to the type of personality that they're dealing
with and okay, these are the things that we're going to need to do.
And I talk about having a strategy, creating leverage, anticipating...
I use the term slay.
So you want to slay your negotiation.
So strategy, leverage, anticipate, meaning you need to always be at least two steps ahead
of what the narcissist is...
And anticipating what they're going to do.
And then focusing on you is the why.
Your mindset, not being a victim, get out of that victim mentality-
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Yeah, I agree.
Because as long as you say, "He makes me feel like..."
"This is what's being done to me.
I can never get what I want."
All those kinds of things.
Or, "This person always charms everyone.
Is smarter than everyone else."
Yeah, you're still nipping the Koolaid then.
Yeah, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Yeah.
Exactly.
So just talking to that attorney and make sure you have an attorney that you feel like
you have a rapport with because you have to put your entire life in this person's hands.
And I tell people all the time, if you don't think that I'm the one for you, there are
plenty of other fish in the sea- Yap, that's right.
And I say the same thing.
And I've got plenty to do.
And I tell clients the same exact thing.
Yeah.
So...
As we're coming sort of to the end of our time, there's two last things that I really
want to make sure people hear.
You've been talking about leverage.
You use that word a lot, especially in this issue of negotiating with a narcissist and
particularly in a divorce.
What does that really mean?
What does that look like?
So leverage to me is, in the context of negotiating with a narcissist, is the motivation, the
incentive, that you're going to give that narcissist to come to the table and have a
conversation with you.
And figuring out what their pain points are, figuring out what their motivation is.
Is it looking as good as possible?
Is it saving their money?
What's their real motivation in all of this?
Is it not letting the world know that they have herpes because they're a doctor in the
community?
Which I've had that situation.
What's going to be the thing that's going to motivate them to come to the table?
And it may be stuff that you gather along the way.
It may be a text message here.
It may be an inconsistency there.
It may be a lie that they told under deposition and now you have proof that it was a lie.
Things like that.
I mean it may be, you're building a wall around this person to the extent that by the time
you get to actually have a conversation about how to resolve the case, they feel completely
boxed in.
And one thing that you should know is that the narcissist acts the worst right before
they're ready to give him.
Oh, absolutely.
And I try to reassure my clients on that.
Now obviously in this idea of creating leverage, that's something that typically happens with
an attorney.
When I work with my clients, I talk about something called their true north.
And I say your true north can be anything.
For some people their true north is literally their freedom.
For some people their true north is time with their children.
For other people their true north is getting an apology.
It's going to be different depending on the person.
And for us a lot of the work is around that because what it does is it take some of the
wind out of the sales of how toxic this experience is.
I said, once you can focus on that fixed point on the horizon or in the sky, then you know
what you're navigating to and it makes all of this makes sense.
We know that suffering can be endurable if you can find meaning and purpose in it and
say, "You know what I am, I am enduring this.
I am doing these things, gaining leverage, working with my attorney, but my true north
is my kids."
And listen, narcissistic divorces always do a number on kids.
I'm not even going to let anyone retain the naive assumption that this divorces does not
do a number on kids.
Well I mean even having a narcissistic parent does a number on kids.
It does a number on a kid whether you're...
Exactly.
So either way your poor kid is already facing a difficult journey and that's something I
take on my content and what happens, those different pathways.
But this is a, people say, "You know what?
I know this experience is going to do a number on my kids, so I'm really focused on making
this as non-contentious as possible."
Yes, getting the leverage but also creating as calm and serene a space for these kids
in the midst of the storm for them to stay sane.
So it's like that balancing act between what I'm doing in my office and what's Rebecca
is doing in her office to get you to that same ending for you and whoever else is being
affected by this process.
And I just want to make one last point before we wrap up here and that is that, and I've
made this point before, but it's worth repeating, and that is that just because you want leverage
doesn't mean that that means you're a fighter, that that means you're being difficult, that
that means you're ramping it up or whatever.
The paradox is that if you don't want to fight, if you want the case to settle amicably, you
have to have leverage against the narcissist- Bingo.
Yeah.
Or you won't be able to do that.
And I think that's such an important point and I'm really glad Rebecca made that point
because this idea that seeking out leverage is not contentious.
It may be the only path to something that even resembles an amicable ending to this.
So I think that that's, it's finding that balance.
Again, anyone who's been through one of these relationships has been through a lot of contention
for a long time.
It's a slow soul death to be in one of these relationships.
So, there is, again, we could talk probably for hours about this idea of how to litigate
with a narcissist.
Apparently the punchline to this joke is it's not easy.
And anyone would know that if they've even gotten into one argument with a narcissistic
individual.
So any parting words?
Just be ready for the fight of your life, but just be patient and persevere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think that's it.
And again, that's where it always comes back to my central ten.
It's realistic expectations, radical acceptance.
Once you get there and you have to remind yourself that it becomes daily practice multiple
times a day, write it on the landing screen of your phone if you need to.
But that, okay, he's behaving foolishly.
She's behaving erratically.
Of course she is, and the sun rose in the east this morning.
Everything's exactly as it should be.
Thanks so much for joining us today on this episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.
And I'm Rebecca Zung and it's been my pleasure to have Dr. Ramani here with us on part two
of this incredible series on how to deal with negotiating with a narcissist.
In this episode we focused on litigating with a narcissist.
Make sure you watch the next episode, which will be the do's and don'ts of litigating
with a narcissist.
If you haven't already, subscribe, hit the notification bell so you don't miss that next
episode.
Thanks so much for joining us today.
And that ends part two of this second installment of our series on how to negotiate with a narcissist.
Watch for more content with me and Dr. Ramani on how to negotiate with a narcissist.
That's coming up.
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